IRS Gave White House Thousands of Taxpayer Documents

The IRS improperly turned over thousands of confidential tax documents to the White House for review, according to information obtained from a lawsuit filed against the U.S. Treasury Department’s inspector general by the legal advocacy firm Cause of Action, exposing a pipeline of communication between the two, the Daily Caller reports.

“[T]he Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration (TIGTA) informed Cause of Action that there exist nearly 2,500 potentially responsive documents relating to investigations of improper disclosures of confidential taxpayer information by the IRS to the White House,” Cause of Action noted, according to the Daily Caller.

Such documentation, including the exchange of confidential information between White House policy adviser Jeanne Lambrew and former IRS official Lois Lerner, came to light after it was revealed that the the IRS had likely targeted conservative groups for review, including one that had sought in a 2012 lawsuit to overturn Obamacare’s contraceptive mandate, the Daily Caller noted.

The Justice Department has asked for a longer window under which to review the newly found documents before releasing them publicly, the Daily Caller said.

The Washington Examiner’s Paul Bedard, in his “Secrets” column, called news of the leaked documents a “shocking revelation.”

“This disclosure, coming only after Cause of Action sued TIGTA over its refusal to acknowledge whether such investigations took place, and after the court ordered TIGTA to reveal whether or not documents existed, signals that the White House may have made significant efforts to obtain taxpayers’ personal information,” Cause of Action wrote in a statement to the Examiner.

The new document release comes a month after a similar lawsuit by True the Vote got tossed by a federal judge. The conservative group, based in Houston, had alleged that the IRS targeted them and delayed their application for a 501(3)(C) nonprofit status, breitbart.com reported.